No Account, No Ads, No Subscription: Why We Built OscillaMind This Way

You have just installed a sound app. It is late, or you are already in bed, and all you want is something quiet to play. The first screen asks for an email address. The next asks you to invent a password. You have not heard a single sound yet.

We built OscillaMind to skip that screen. You open it, you choose a sound, you press play.

OscillaMind is a sound app we are building for evenings, mornings and the moments in between. It is not released yet, and it is coming to iOS and Android. Three choices shape almost everything else about it: no account, no ads and no subscription. What follows describes the app as we are designing it today, and the designs are still being reviewed.

The screen we left out

There is no sign-up. Nothing in the app asks you to create a login, because nothing in it needs one.

Your routines, your sounds, your morning check-ins and your listening history are kept on your phone. We don’t run a service that holds a profile of you, so there is nothing to log in to.

That is a real trade-off, and we would rather say so. Nothing moves between phones on its own. If you change phones, your purchase comes back through your store account, and you can save a copy of your history as a single file and keep it wherever you like.

A quiet that nobody sells

Think of the last minute before sleep, a soft sound drifting along, and an ad breaking into it. A sound app you use to wind down should not interrupt you.

Ads would also mean connecting to outside services and counting what you do, which is the opposite of how we want this to work. So the first version has no advertising, no analytics, no crash-reporting service and no tracking tools. The app doesn’t pay for itself by watching you listen.

One price, paid once

The plan fits in a breath. 30 days free. At day 30, we ask whether you want to buy, and we add 7 more days so you have time to decide. Then a one-time $2.99 purchase. No subscription.

Your app store handles the purchase, and the purchase stays with your store account. On a new phone, you use Restore purchase with the same account.

Why one price, paid once? Because a sleep and wake-up routine is something you want to rely on. It shouldn’t depend on a monthly payment continuing.

What happens when the trial ends

An alarm is the one thing people really depend on, so we are designing around it. Our rule is that the end of the trial should not quietly turn off an alarm someone is counting on.

Here is how we are designing it:

An alarm that is already scheduled is designed to keep ringing, with a fallback if something goes wrong.
Warnings come first, before future wake-ups stop. They are designed to arrive during waking hours, not in the middle of the night, and to be scheduled in advance so they can appear even if you haven’t opened the app.
A night in progress is designed to finish.
Nothing you saved is deleted. Your routines, sounds, history and check-ins stay on your phone.
Buying turns everything back on at once, including your wake-ups.

No app can promise that an alarm will ring every time. Phone settings, battery management, interruptions from the operating system or a force-stop can interfere. OscillaMind shows the permissions and settings it can detect, and we suggest a backup alarm for mornings that matter.

After the trial, the app shows a simple screen with three choices: buy, restore a purchase, or view and export your data.

We will test all of this overnight on real phones over real nights, including nights when the app hasn’t been opened. An emulator on a desk isn’t proof for something you might sleep through.

Where your history lives

Your listening history stays on your phone. In this first version, the app has no account, no analytics, no advertising and no tracking, and the only outside service it is allowed to use is your store, for the purchase.

A few more details:

No microphone. The app doesn’t ask for microphone access.
Your data is yours to take. You can export one readable file with your routines, nights, check-ins and settings. It goes only where you save or send it.
Deleting is your choice. The only way anything is deleted is when you choose Delete everything, after a confirmation that also tells you it turns off your wake-up alarm. If you remove the app from your phone, its data goes with it, as with any app, so export first if you want a copy.
History is only added to. If you change a routine, the app saves a new version rather than rewriting the old one.

Playing without a signal

The sounds play without an internet connection. You only need one for the store, when you buy or restore. If the store can’t be reached, the app says so and your data stays on your phone, and a purchase that has already been confirmed keeps working offline.

What we are not saying

We are not promising an outcome from any sound. OscillaMind describes what plays and when people choose it, such as rain and a 6 Hz beat for winding down. It doesn’t say what a sound will do for you.

OscillaMind is for listening and routines, not medical care. If you have a health concern, talk to a doctor.

We also try to keep two lists separate: what is released and what is planned. Today, nothing is released. As the app takes shape, we will keep saying which is which.

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